I certainly have no problem believing this statistic! Portland and Trimet spend wild amounts of money on transit “investments”. The debate would be “is it money wisely spent?” Other services are ignored while transit is the main focus of government spending. Is it money well spent? Time will tell.

2-number of safety incidents per million trips

This was a shock to me. Our management has been spending thousands of staff hours and tens of thousands of dollars to transform our culture to a “culture of safety”. So who’s mistaken? US News and World Report or Trimet executive management? If Trimet executive management has been using safety as a control method or propaganda tool then I we have a real problem with who’s running Trimet right now. If US News is wrong then the entire article can be disregarded as faulty research methodology.

3-the number of trips taken per capita

No problem believing this either. Trimet’s methods of collecting data along with its fare less square, and its bogus transfer system (which is basically unenforceable)which allows riders to travel in any direction for as long as the transfer is good would definitely make this a believable statistic.

All in all, these ratings mean nothing. The only statistic that is of any value is the safety statistic.And that means our management is seriously deluded or just plain liars if the statistic is indeed accurate.

"It's been several months in the works, but with some hard work and diligence by our respective negotiating teams, we've arrived at a settlement that's been well supported by the membership," said Davies.Terms of the agreement include a seven-per-cent increase in wages over three years for the 241 transit workers, including bus operators, mechanics and support staff.